In James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time his essay “you can only be destroy by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger” deals with the relations of self-awareness and responsibility distinguishing between Baldwin’s speaks to his nephew about the inhumanity and fear of the racist whites, warning his brother’s son that that he was born in this society with brutal clarity, and in many possible ways, that you were a worthless human being, that you were not expected to aspire to excellence, you were expected to make peace with mediocrity. Although it is ambiguous which Baldwin critiques threat of social death, Baldwin reminds his nephew that the worthlessness which has been foisted upon his black male body is fact reflective
